readings in psychology for 3 september 2013 @PsychScience

This is just what I wanted for my birthday lunch! It is a South African Curry dish of shrimp on saffron rice. Simple and delicious!

Here is what I am reading today:

• the evolution of words and tools

“Unlike ancient bones and stone tools, language does not fossilize. Researchers have to guess about its origins based on proxy indicators. Does painting cave walls indicate the capacity for language? How about the ability to make a fancy tool? Yet, in recent years, scientists have made some progress. A series of brain imaging studies by Dietrich Stout, an archaeologist at Emory University in Atlanta, and Thierry Chaminade, a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille University in France, have shown that toolmaking and language use similar parts of the brain, including regions involved in manual manipulations and speech production. Moreover, the overlap is greater the more sophisticated the toolmaking techniques are.”

• transparent skull implant!

“”This is a case of a science fiction sounding idea becoming science fact, with strong potential for positive impact on patients,” said Guillermo Aguilar, a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE).

Aguilar is part of 10-person team, comprised of faculty, graduate students and researchers from UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering and School of Medicine, who recently published a paper “Transparent Nanocrystalline Yttria-Stabilized-Zirconia Calvarium Prosthesis” about their findings online in the journalNanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine.”

• music and the heart

“Prof Delijanin Ilic, the lead investigator, from the Institute of Cardiology, University of Nis, Serbia, said: “When we listen to music we like then endorphins are released from the brain and this improves our vascular health. There is no ‘best music’ for everyone – what matters is what the person likes and makes them happy.”

She said other studies examining the impact of music suggested there might be some types of music which were less good for the heart – with heavy metal more likely to raise stress levels, while opera, classical and other types of ‘joyful’ music were more likely to stimulate endorphins.”

• the secrets of wines aroma

“Connected at UNU-BIOLAC workshops in Montevideo, Uruguayan chemistry professor Francisco Carrau and scientist Massimo Delledonne of Italy recently collaborated on sequencing the Tannat grape, pressings of which, thanks partly to its many seeds, produces the largest concentration of tannins — an anti-oxidant that combats the ageing of cells.

Wines made from the Tannat are known as the most healthy of red wines due to their high levels of procyanidins, said to be good for reducing blood pressure, lowering cholesterol and encouraging healthy blood clotting.”

• NFL settles… but should they have?

“”The lawsuit is not a scientific issue, it’s a legal and political issue,” Randolph said. “There is absolutely no credible scientific data to suggest an increase of neurological risk from playing professional football.”

Under the tentative settlement, the NFL would pay up to $5 million for each player who has Alzheimer’s disease and up to $4 million for each death from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). But a recent study by Randolph and colleagues of retired NFL football players found no evidence that CTE even exists. The study was published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.”

• europeans are growing taller

“Timothy J. Hatton, Professor of Economics at the University of Essex and the Research School of Economics at Australian National University in Canberra, examined and analysed a new dataset for the average height (at the age of around 21) of adult male birth cohorts, from the 1870s to 1980, in fifteen European countries. The data were drawn from a variety of sources. For the most recent decades the data were mainly taken from height-by-age in cross sectional surveys. Meanwhile, observations for the earlier years were based on data for the heights of military conscripts and recruits. The data is for men only as the historical evidence for women’s heights is severely limited.”

• prolonging life

“Like humans, Drosophila fruitflies become forgetful with age.

But at least their memory deficits can be reversed by eating a diet rich in polyamines, according to a study published online today¹ in Nature Neuroscience.

“There’s a great need for cognitive enhancers to keep us healthy into old age — now polyamines are offering a new approach,” says learning and memory specialist Ronald Davis at the Scripps Research Institute Florida in Jupiter, who was not involved in the study. “There are reasons for optimism that this fly work will translate into human.”

• reputations are important

“Our reputation is important to us; we’ve experienced natural selection to care about our reputation. Recently, the neural processing of gains in reputation (positive social feedback concerning one’s character) has been shown to occur in the human ventral striatum. It is still unclear, however, how individual differences in the processing of gains in reputation may lead to individual differences in real-world behavior.”